Mexican Repatriation of the 1930's Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Mexican Repatriation of the 1930's - Essay Example The President of United States, Mr. Herbert Hoover supported these actions and allowed the targeting of Mexican population. The most affected areas were California, Texas, Colorado, Illinois and Michigan. This made them leave the country and they went back to Mexico. United States of America was always a heaven for immigrants from different parts of the world. There used to be a million immigrants from Europe each year before the introduction of Quota Act of 1924. The new act reduced the immigration to less than 100, 000 immigrants per year. As the Depression began and people started suffering of it, government planned to take an action against the illegal immigrants, who were not only burden on the weakened economy but were also the cause of disturbance among the people in the country (Blea, 1988. Page No. 99). The act does not put extra restrictions from the immigrants of Mexico and they enjoyed their stay and mobility between the two countries. It came out that there were more than 400,000 illegal immigrants in United States. The government started a raid against the illegal immigrants in all the major cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco etc. This resulted in the deportation of some 163,900 people in ten years. These p eople were living illegally in the United States and almost 35,000 people were deported to Mexico (Barrera, 1974. Page No. 21). This makes it 20 percent of all the deported people. People who were living legally were also deported due to the some legal reasons. But a large number of Mexican immigrants came illegally and they were deported back to their country. Almost 1.3 million Mexican origin people were deported in 1930's and the number increased to 1.6 million in the next decade. It is considered to be a shameful act by the Americans and many people realize it now. According to many Americans, it was a shameful time in the United States, which is considered to be a land of opportunity for all the people around the world (Burma, 1970. Page No. 192). Hundreds of thousands of people were forcefully removed from the country and it includes the Native Americans too.And another point here is that not many people around the world know about this. This was not publicized and somewhat very little material can be seen about Mexican Repatriation today, if we compare it to the other shameful events which took place in the world. The Mexican Repatriation is considered to be the largest involuntary migration in the United States of America in nineteenth century, after the removal of Native Americans. It was the second time that Mexicans faced the repatriation. The Mexicans first faced it in 1848 after the Mexican War (Hoffman, Page No. 82). Another repatriation was started in 1915, when Mexican Americans rebels were stood against the United States and they tried to re-conquer the lands, which were once owned by the Mexicans. This resulted in the forceful deportation of thousands of Mexicans to their native country. The Mexican Repatriation of 1929-1944 was different in a sense that many American citizens were also sent to Mexico, only because they were Mexico